Church of Nativity deal would end 38-day standoff

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- The 5 1/2-week standoff at the Church of the Nativity neared an end early today with a complex deal to scatter 13 Palestinian militants among up to eight countries. Bethlehem's police chief said the Palestinians were to begin leaving the church around daybreak.

The arrangement reached with European negotiators will clear the way for Israeli forces to withdraw from the last West Bank city they occupy, but does not spell an end to Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed.

As the final logistics were being worked out, Israeli tanks stood poised outside the Gaza Strip early today ahead of an expected retaliatory attack for a suicide bombing that killed 15 Israelis.

Israel's siege over Christ's reputed birthplace was one of the focal points of its West Bank invasion, and ending it became an international cliffhanger of on-again, off-again breakthroughs.

On Thursday, a senior Palestinian official confirmed a new deal had been reached.

With Israel linking the 13 men to terrorism, finding a country willing to take them has been a major obstacle to ending the siege at one of the holiest sites in the Christian world.

The breakthrough came when Cypriot Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides said his country would temporarily take in the 13 Palestinians before they were flown to their final destinations.

A British military aircraft took off from an air base in Cyprus about 11 p.m. for Israel to pick up the men, said British officials in Cyprus, speaking on condition of anonymity. They said two Cypriot police were aboard to escort the Palestinians back. There was no word on the plane's arrival in Israel.

Early today, Palestinian negotiator Alaa Hosni, the Bethlehem police chief, said the deal would be carried out starting about 6 a.m. It was expected to take several hours for all the Palestinians in the church to emerge, go through security and identity checks and be sent to their next destinations -- exile in Europe, Gaza or home.

Negotiations mix-up

The standoff seemed near an end Tuesday, when negotiations initially designated Italy as the host country for the entire group of 13. But the Italian government balked, saying it had not been consulted.

An Italian Foreign Ministry official said late Thursday that under the new deal that emerged, Italy and Spain would take some of the militants, while Austria, Greece, Luxembourg, Ireland and perhaps Canada might take the rest. However, Canadian foreign affairs spokesman Oussamah Tamim said Canada hadn't been asked.

The Italian official said the details of the exile would be worked out at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.